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Trobador222
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Post by Trobador222 » Sat May 01, 2021 2:38 am

I had to go to Los Angeles. Los Angeles is........interesting. In the greater area, there are 10 million people and 15 million cars. And the cars are on the road all the time. I actually was never closer than 50 miles to the City of Los Angeles. I went across the valley and down to Carson, which is near Long Beach. I got in and out in a day, which is unusual. My load out, turned out to be a Covid 19 exempt load. That means we can throw the rule book out the window and drive as long as we want, as long as the load meets the criteria. It has to be food, water or medical supplies. My load was bottled water. I went back to Coachella and spent the night. 16 hour day though. In the meantime, enjoy some Americana I just found. Cool song!

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Ashley
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Re: Home!

Post by Ashley » Sat May 01, 2021 4:25 am

I'm happy that you made it home safe. -cool song btw!
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Re: Home!

Post by Trobador222 » Sat May 01, 2021 6:54 am

Ashley wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 4:25 am
I'm happy that you made it home safe. -cool song btw!
Thanks! It's easy now and I was on a Southern route. No snow and ice! I did three weeks almost running back and forth to Texas. I was supposed to get my second vaccine last week, but this load to LA came up. It was a HAZMAT load, which means hazardous materials. I have that license endorsement. Not all our drivers do and it was for one of our big clients in the Cruise Ship industry. Before the pandemic, we spent April through October running supplies from Miami FL to Washington, to supply cruise ships going to Alaska. So they still have crews on ships and needed an emergency supply run to LA. I checked it out and found out I had a 15 day window to get my second vaccine to still get maximum effect. So I volunteered. It's about a 4 and a half day run out there in regular hours. I got back in 3 and a half. I did a 900 mile run yesterday. 650 is normal. My truck is actually governed at 68 mph. Thats as fast as I can go.

When I was doing that Texas run, a couple of our drivers got snowed in for a couple of days in Wyoming.

From out terminal to LA at the drop was 2590 miles. Out of that 890 miles is in Texas. Texas is fun. In East Texas, it super green and pine and oak trees, and lots of towns and people. A little less than half way, you go through San Antonio, where the Alamo is. Then you get into the Texas Hill country, where not is scrub oaks and cedars in semi desert hills. The you get into the mesa country where it is a lot of mesquite and creosote bush. Then you run into the sage brush desert. The mountains look like ragged rocks rising out of sand and alkali flats and the towns are hundreds of miles apart. This time of year, you have to watch for dust storms and dust devils, which are mini tornadoes form out on the flats and can be tiny or a thousand feet tall.

When you are about 50 miles from El Paso, you begin to see houses, off in the distance with desert in between. Those houses are all in Mexico. As you get closer into El Paso, you see Juarez which is a big city develop on the Mexican side. In downtown El Paso, you are 100 feet from the Mexican border in places on the interstate. Then you run through New Mexico for about 180 miles, then, you are in Arizona. The interstate goes right by Tombstone Arizona, which is a famous old west town. The "shoot out at the OK corral" happened in Tombstone. Wyatt Earp and his brothers and Doc Holiday gunned down 3 or 4 people there and many movies have been made about it.

You go through Tucson and Phoenix too. Just NE of Phoenix are the Superstition Mountains, where there is a legend about a lost gold mine and to this day, people go out there and disappear. Then you get to California and there is a huge check point on the state border, where they check to make sure people are not bringing in agricultural products uninspected. A lot of people complain about that, but the agricultural industry in California provides about 40% of the fruits and vegetables that are consumed in the US, so they are serious about protecting that. California, standing alone as an economy, is the 6th largest economy in the world. So many right wingers hate them, because of their liberalism and they are the most Democratic state in the US and they out do every other state economically and most countries in the world. Funny how that works.

But LA.........LA is wild and weird and unpredictable. You never know what you are going to run into. Musically, it is so interesting too. In rock and country music, it rose up in the 1950s through the 1990s and the recording industry there gave the world so much. There is a little town north of LA called Bakersfield. There were two or three really influential Country Music artists who came out of there. Buck Owens, Win Stewart and Merle Haggard. Their contemporaries them wandered down to LA and went all into the recording industry. A lot of them became studio musicians who played on everything coming out the west coast. There were a group called "The Wrecking Crew" who played on about everything recorded from the late 1950s through the late 11970s. Some of them became famous on their own. Glen Campbell was one. He played guitar and so much stuff as a studio musician. His guitar work is on most of the biggest Beach Boys albums. If you go back and trace it out, there are all sorts of connections around those clary musicians into several generations.

When Linda Rondstat was an up and coming act in LA, she had a backing band called The Sonte Ponies, who were members of that wrecking crew scene. Two members of her band, were Glen Frye and Don Henly who went on to form the Eagles. Don Henly, gave interviews talking about how he lived in an apartment above Jackson Brown and ow brown would get up everyday and sit down at the piano and start trying to write songs and Frye would sit there and listen to Browns writing process and learned how to write songs based on that.

Man, there are a million stories. I have been right down in South Central LA picking up loads, where we had to drop our trailers in the facilities and go park on the street. I would go out and hang out have the time of my life, listening to good music. I love California!

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Re: Home!

Post by Ashley » Sun May 02, 2021 11:31 am

Sounds fun that is for sure and visiting all those different places would be interesting and fun. It also sounds like lots of time on the road too, so be safe Henry and all the best to you!!
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Re: Home!

Post by Mr. Marty » Sun May 02, 2021 7:35 pm

Oh man, you skipped over descriptions of the more interesting state, New Mexico. Never been on the I-10 route. I once took the back roads from Tucson to Roswell, to Amarillo...most of it at night. But even then it was an interesting drive. Roswell was a hoot as we drove through on a Saturday night. It was like the movie American Graffiti. Barstow (or was it Bakersfield, I forget) was another town like that. Much of small town America was like this a few years back. I am not sure it still exists but I hope it does.

I am more familiar with the I-40 route and the NW portion of the state. I would like to wander the northern portion of New Mexico and southern Colorado. i even have routes and destinations planned. I just need time and a driver.

I have been to LA region several times. I always hated it. Too hard to get anywhere. What struck me was that the nature of the whole area is like the strip mall region of any US city, only there is a shitload of it. I drove down to San Deigo a couple times too. Same thing. The last time I was there I flew into LAX. It really destress me to see the brown haze of pollution that the plane descended into before we landed. But once we drove north of LA on over to San Bernadino the land was different, mountains and ocean from the same viewpoint. Neat. But still, the towns were basically striip malls.

I envy you, to be so fortunate to travel. Enjoy it while you can.

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Trobador222
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Re: Home!

Post by Trobador222 » Mon May 03, 2021 9:13 am

The most striking thing in the NM portion is right there at Las Cruces. The Oregon Mountains rise up just east of the city. I stayed at a truck stop there on the trip back. Realized that in all the years Ive been doing this now, that was the first time I have ever overnighted there. Yeah, endless strip mall is a good way to describe the Valley. Coming in at night is interesting when you come down out of the mountains and the lights of the endless sprawl spread out for as far as you can see.

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